Proximity
georges bataille, body horror, weird fiction, the torture garden, ecstatic sacrifice, folk horror, rural china, slow burn horror
Rose He
Ashless Sacrifice
A journey to the family home. Another face inside the photograph.
Changqi returns to a village hollowed by hunger and devotion. Beneath a solitary tree, deep within a cave, a god waits. A god that changes. A god that asks for sacrifice.
Wooden plaques slick with dew. Ceremonial clothes abandoned in the corner. Empty jars, coarse cakes, a sharp bronze leaf, candle wax dripping over skin. The limits of the body, and the powers of the maddened mind. Desire, corrupting, sanctifying.
Ashless Sacrifice is a grotesque procession through metamorphosis, ecstatic appetite, and the secret nature of the gods. Strange, sensual, and grim, the story of Lin Changqi and his cruel god will linger like blood beneath the tongue.
A visceral seduction: delicious, haunting, and quietly horrible, possessed of a dreadful eroticism that draws the reader deeper into the labyrinth with every page. Folk horror touched by Bataille, Ashless Sacrifice is a delectable journey into the ecstasies of immolation.
– Georgia Van Raalte, Gospel of the Worms
A gruesome, unexpected novella that subverts expectation and lingers long after the final page. Disturbing in the best way, especially in its second half — I really liked it.
— Sam Cowan, Dim Shores
